


Despite Everything

by Ori_Cat



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: "It" used as a pronoun, ...i'm just gonna admit I don't know how to write deer, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, I Don't Even Know, Nihilism, Other, Out of Character, Scars, Torture, but the good kind of nihilism, for both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-05-21 16:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Ostensibly a crack fic in which I ship Pangloss and Saturn Deer. And then things got philosophical.





	Despite Everything

Everything smells of blood. Blood and cooked meat, and the world is more shadow than light, since there’s only one lightbulb and it seem just so _tired,_ caged naked behind plastic and tied to a poor grid in a poor land. 

The light that there is roams over concrete walls and rusted pipes and a chair that contains about 93% of a human body, by mass. (Or by volume: being made mostly of water, humans are very nearly incompressible and retain constant density.) Its inhabitant is there too, even if metaphorically it is somewhere else, hiding inside the dark channels within its own skull that will probably not be breached for a while yet. 

(The other 7% is in various locations around the room, if anyone’s wondering.) 

Someone comes in. Someone comes in and picks up something that rattles like iron. Someone comes in and comes over and pokes it in the side of the face until it’s dragged out again, out from the darkness through bone and muscle and blood and into the harsh, fractured-glass edges of the real world. 

And in the moment before the pain begins again it thinks, inexplicably, of wings. 

  
  


From the outside, a human appears to be nothing but a batch of carbon atoms and sodium channels and water arranged in complicated patterns, All of this, evidently, adds up to a machine whose purpose is to take in perfectly good carbohydrates and spit out things like cities, and ice cream, and poetry. 

The reason for this has yet to be determined. 

  
  


There’s a roof, somewhere, in some generic city filled with a million souls and even more people. The two figures on it don’t count towards that total, of course, lain out with the stars in their eyes; but they could claw the thousand stars away if they wanted. Or clamber through them. They are not people, not really. 

Nonetheless, there are all the trappings of humanity there. There’s a coat that makes _swishing_ noises every time one or the other brushes against it. There’s a couple of crunched pieces of paper. There’s a torn cardboard box that once contained cans of beer, and the cans lie on their sides around it, some empty, some full. 

One of them appears to be telling a story. “- so then I said, I said, hey, you listen here you - you bugger, it is my basic human right to -” 

The other breaks out laughing, so hard tears start into its eyes and it has to sit up to relieve the stitch that forms between its ribs. “ _Rights,_ ” it slurs, as though that is any explanation, before collapsing into helpless giggles again. 

It receives a glare and a thrown pebble, which bounces off the space between its eyes with a plonk, for its trouble. “I am _talking._ ” 

It sighs. “Oh, go on then,” it answers, and lies back down against the coolth of the cement. The story continues, something about bars and things getting broken, and it still can’t keep itself from grinning stupidly at the few stars hiding inside the orange haze. 

  
  


There was a man, once, who decided to avail himself of determining, philosophically, the nature of humanity. (Yes. No atom on its own is self-aware, but gather enough of them and organize them in the right ways and they will suddenly become self-aware, and then self-centred, and then start assigning themselves tasks like determining philosophically their own nature. It is an odd phenomenon, but there you have it.) 

What he came up with was this: all humans are essentially bastards. They cannot be trusted to act in any but their own self-interest, and cannot always be trusted even to do that. They will lie, cheat, steal, and murder as it suits them, and without strict control do in fact do these things until the world is a mess of people acting only for their own amusement and pain is instilled upon the rest of creation. 

There is definitely enough evidence to support that conclusion, if one only looks around at the state of the world. 

  
  


There is a door. As doors go, it is not particularly impressive - just dark-blue painted wood and a dinged silver doorknob, hinges beginning to rust and pins to slip out. (No, the where of this one will not be specified either.) A fine crack of fluorescent light shows beneath it. 

Up to it, soles falling soft onto the floor, saunters a figure burnt-brown and grass-stained green, who lifts a roughened hand and knocks. 

“Go ‘way, I’m busy,” drifts the reply from within. 

The first one looks slightly skeptical at that. “Doing what?” it asks conversationally. 

“I am making the world a more interesting place,” comes the answer. Even muffled by the wood, it sounds fairly smug. 

There is a pause. The figure outside the door looks pensive. “Do I really want to know?” it asks. 

“Probably not.” 

The figure nods, in practiced resigned acceptance. “Will someone lost their life or limb as a result?” 

“No!” The response sounds scandalized. “What kind of person do you think I am?” An expression flashes across the figure outside the door’s face that indicates that it is aware it shouldn’t answer that, because the answer will likely be less flattering than the other wants to hear. “Waaait. Who do you consider someone?” 

“Anyone.” 

There is another pause. “Okay, then _probably_ not. And at least they’ll have consented to it beforehand.” 

There is an eyeroll. “I suppose that’s all I can ask for.” It’s passive-aggression pushed far enough to come around again, become a joke, become a container full of forbearance. 

A derisive snort from within. “C’mon. You can’t seriously be stupid enough to think that you’re going to change me. Deal with it.” 

The other figure grins shamelessly, though there is nobody that can see. “I live in hope,” it replies. And this is true. 

  
  


“You are a disaster,” the other says, fondly, against the back of its neck. 

“Hey! It is my goddamn human right to be as much of a disaster as I want!” it protests. “And besides,” it adds, “at least I’m an _awesome_ disaster.” 

  
  


There was another man, once, who decided to avail himself of determining, philosophically, the nature of humanity. 

What he came up with was this: all humans are essentially kind. Sure, harm can come, but it is not due to malice, only due to the fact that the world they live in is flawed and fallen - but they can rise above that. They can maintain hope. Despite everything, mankind is good, is beautiful, as the dreamers and creators and keepers of the meaning of the universe. After all, there’s no-one else that looks up at the sky and _wonders_ about things. 

There is definitely enough evidence to support that conclusion too, if one only looks around at the state of the world. 

  
  


Hearing the other come in, it sets down the pencil and spins around to look at it. The chair goes click-click, because it is that kind of chair and because it has forgotten to fold up a chunk of paper and shove it under one of the legs to prevent that. The other looks dull, like fields of ash, and so it scrunches its nose at it and says “Nice shirt.” 

It receives a look that very clearly stipulates _I don’t know where you’re going with this. Would you mind just getting there?_

It smirks at it, lecherously. “ ‘D look better on the floor,” it teases. The other just regards it for a second, head tilted bird-like to the side. Then it loops fingers under the edge of the fabric and lifts. 

“Okay, no, _stop._ ” 

The first one - the one currently wearing an expression of sudden dawning realization that what it has asked for it does not truly want, the one with its hand stretched out in half-restriction, half-desire - knows what death looks like. It has met it, multiple times, under multiple names. In multiple guises. Long and weak deaths, fast and painless deaths, it has met them all. It has even danced with death once (which, to be completely honest, is not everything it’s cracked up to be). 

The other has never died. It seems somewhat unfair, therefore, that it should be the one to bear scars. 

Revealed beneath the hem of its shirt, curving along the line of the base of its ribs all the way to the sternum, a thick twist of pink and white splits its skin apart. Ragged edges and the twists of roughly-mended tissue give testament to someone’s violence, someone’s cruelty; to flesh being torn and healed and torn again by something with a lot of sharp edges. 

(There are others, as well. Two pale circles about the wristbones and ankles, the ghosts of long-ago-broken shackles; minute craters marring the corners of the lips; a heavy white slash across the back of each knee. Fetters upon fetters upon fetters.) 

For a moment, neither moves, the first caught in startled horror and the second still looking unmoved, and mildly expectant. Then the first remembers to breathe, and exhales in a rush. There is graphite smudged on its fingers and rips at the edges of its nails, and it reaches out - the other could step back, but it doesn’t, it lets it place a hand against against the scar, with all the gentleness it can muster (not much). Something twists in its gut, to think of how such a wound could be made. 

It’s fun to profane things, it is always very delightful and satisfying to profane things, and as yet it has not come upon something that it couldn’t figure out a way to screw up. It could try to profane this, if it wanted, and could probably succeed. 

It doesn’t really want to, this time. 

  
  


As much as people continue to look at the sky, they haven’t been able to come to a consensus on that meaning. 

From the outside, the most plausible hypothesis seems to be that nothing matters at all. Humans are only bags of carbon and water, and everything else is an elaborate delusion. 

…there’s still poetry.


End file.
